January is Human Trafficking Awareness month and agencies across the United States are bringing awareness to this issue as it is one of the fastest-growing criminal activities in the world.
According to the United Nations’ website, thousands of women, men and children are trafficked for sexual or labor exploitation each year.
Human trafficking is sometimes referred to as modern-day slavery and victims are subjected to force, fraud or coercion by their trafficker.
Advocates for Freedom is an organization located in Mississippi that is designed to bring awareness to human trafficking.
Susie Harvill, executive director of AFF said human trafficking occurs in Mississippi.
“It is in most all of our towns, either labor trafficking or sex trafficking or both,” Harvill said. “It is usually a fraud type of situation, they are being told that they are going to make great money, but that is not the case.”
From January 1 to 4, about 60,000 college students attended Passion, an annual conference that takes place in Atlanta, Ga., where over $3 million were raised to stop human trafficking.
Brittany Farley, junior secondary education major, was one of these students. She said Passion encouraged her to become more aware of the products she uses that slaves may have made.
“There’s a website called Slavery Footprint which you can go to and see how many slaves work for you. I went and found that my total was 55 slaves. That’s incredible to think that there are 55 people forced to do stuff for me,” Farley said.
Megan Grice, freshman secondary education major, also attended Passion. She said she was surprised to hear how prevalent human trafficking is in the United States.
“A lot of times, people push social problems on the other countries and think that America doesn’t have any, but we have a whole lot more than we see,” Grice said. “I also found out about a hotline number that you can call in the U.S. and they will contact someone in your state that will help you.”
Harvill said college students can take action to raise awareness and help stop this fast-growing crime.
“I suggest that they get involved,” Harvill said. “They can find either a home they want to work in and lend support, use their computer skills for enhancing different programs that will bring about awareness, or volunteer and work with an agency.”